Politics Archives

Monday

18 Jun 2012

Miliband’s union problems deepen

Ed Miliband must be livid. He has a sizeable lead in the polls, has taken ground on the economy and watches the government lurch from one self-authored disaster to the next. And then, and then, the trade unions engineer a very public row with the centrist think-tank Progress (which is funded by former Labour donor Lord Sainsbury) over the ‘soul’ of the Labour Party. Jackie Ashley observes in today’s Guardian that this silly spat has grown out of all proportion. Lord Mandelson was asked about it on the Andrew Marr Show yesterday, and he reiterated many of the points made by Denis MacShane in this Coffee House post of the

Nick Cohen

Why are the unions frightened?

Labour has only ever won a general election from the autumn of 1974 onwards when its leader has been called &”Tony Blair”. Four other leaders tried, but they were not called &”Tony Blair,” and Labour paid the price. I find it hard to credit the left’s failure myself sometimes, and, equally, find it easy to understand how Labour supporters became riddled with self-hatred and self-doubt as they saw ‘their’ Blairite government in action. But it is going a bit far for Paul Kenny of the GMB to deal with the compromises of the past by calling on Labour to declare the Blairte think tank Progress an anti-party organisation and ban

Sunday

17 Jun 2012

David Blackburn

Debt as a threat to national security

Today’s papers carry news that British nuclear submarines are going to be replaced: a strong indication that the government will replace Trident with a like-for-like deterrent in 2016, contrary to the wishes of the Liberal Democrats. Philip Hammond appeared on the Sunday Politics earlier today to answer questions from Andrew Neil on Trident and manpower cuts to the army. Hammond said that the Trident decision has not been taken. The government is, he said, simply ensuring that Britain can implement whatever decision is taken. On army cuts, he said, ‘We [Britain] will still be able to make a major contribution to a cross-alliance operation.’ The rum suggestion being that Britain’s

David Blackburn

Make or break in Europe?

‘I think we are at a make or break place in Europe,’ said former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on the Andrew Marr Show. Europe is holding its breath for the results of today’s election, which, should the radical leftists Syriza win, threatens to open a new chapter in the euro’s unhappy history. Germany remains adamant that Greek cannot renege on its bailout deal. But rumours that Germany would welcome Greece’s exit persist; indeed, the Sunday Times reports (£) that the European Union is, collectively, preparing emergency aid packages for Athens, should the country withdraw. These preparations are the sort of coherent and complete action that the euro-crisis has demanded.

James Forsyth

The worst of all possible worlds

The Greek election has, in terms of the Eurozone crisis, produced the worst possible result. If the Interior Ministry’s initial projections are accurate, New Democracy has come first. But it is hard to see how they can form a coalition given that PASOK, the party of the establishment left, have said they won’t go into coalition without Syriza, the anti-bailout party. PASOK’s ambivalence is understandable given that any party that goes in with New Democracy is likely to be wiped out at the next election. But the coming Greek stalemate is likely to make life particularly difficult for central bankers: do they act before tomorrow morning or wait for the

James Forsyth

The return of Osborne’s good spirits — and his cat

The most important event today is the Greek election, with its huge implications for the future of the Eurozone. But this morning, the political class is chattering about George Osborne because of the poll which Fraser blogged about earlier. Osborne is one of the more self-aware politicians that you’ll meet. One colleague says, only half-jokingly, that Osborne’s mood is the best guide there is to the future prospects of the government. In recent weeks, Obsorne has not been in good form—his post Budget woes and the never ending crisis in the Eurozone appeared to be getting him down. As one person who works closely with him remarked to me recently,

Fraser Nelson

Osborne, class and competence

The Sunday Mirror and the Independent have jointly commissioned an opinion poll which finds that George Osborne is ‘too posh’ to be chancellor. This just happens to fit the prejudices of both newspapers, and I for one do not believe it. Poshness certainly obsesses Tory strategists, and Gordon Brown sometimes played the class card because he saw how much agony it caused them. But Brown’s card was not the winning trump he hoped for because the British public is not as obsessed about class as the British elite. That’s why it backfired when Labour tried a class strategy in the Crewe by-election campaign. That by-election suggested that the average British

Saturday

16 Jun 2012

Peter Jones

Thucydides on Greece’s choice

In 416 bc, the island of Melos, neutral in the war between Athens and Sparta, was confronted with a choice by the Athenians: yield to us or else. The contemporary historian Thucydides relates an instructive dialogue between the sides. In the following extracts, the Athenians have been amusingly replaced by the EU, the Melians by the Greeks, who agree their survival is the issue: EU: We shall not claim that we have the right to rule or that we are now seeking retribution for some wrong done to us. But you know very well that, on the human plane, questions of justice arise only when there is equal power to

Denis Macshane Mp

Another voice: It is time for new trade unions

The attack on Progress by the GMB union at its annual conference is odd and reflects the uncertainty of trade unions as they try and work out their role and status in a 21st century which is proving very unfriendly to trade unions across the world. In the United States, only 7 per cent of the private sector workforce is unionized. The figures in France are similarly low. In Britain, TUC membership has shrunk for the fourth year in succession. Union bashers may rejoice, and certainly there are Tory MPs who think the last great bit of Thatcherite unfinished business is the extirpation of organized labour. But workers are

Martin Vander Weyer

Gateway to Europe: Madrid’s leaning towers offer a potent symbol of debt-fuelled folly

In this anxious lull between the Spanish bailout and the Greek election result, the most potent symbol of the continent’s perilous financial state is Madrid’s Puerta de Europa, or ‘Gateway to Europe’. That happens to be the name of the twin skyscrapers that lean towards each other at a sickening angle over the shoulders of television reporters tasked with trying to explain whether last weekend’s €100 billion deal was a triumph of robust collective action or — as markets seem to be signalling — another domino-fall in the inevitable disintegration of the single currency. Conceived in the late 1980s as a showpiece of Spain’s real-estate-fuelled new prosperity, the Madrid project

Matthew Parris

The idea that the Fraser Brown story should have been suppressed is extraordinary

In the week past, Gordon Brown has been involved in a sad dispute with the Sun about whether that newspaper did or did not have his and his wife’s approval for publishing news of the then prime minister’s baby son Fraser’s cystic fibrosis. The Sun (in the form of Rebekah Brooks) has claimed the couple consented to publication. The Browns claim they did not but, believing nothing could stop the report, tried to negotiate with the Sun about the manner in which the story came out, in order ‘to minimise the damage’, as Mr Brown put it. Those two accounts are reconcilable. There is much in life to which we’re

James Forsyth

The Tories who are hoping Greece will go

There’s a new and growing faction in the Tory party. It includes several members of the Cabinet, various senior backbenchers and many of the brightest members of the 2010 intake. They are the Syriza Tories, united in their belief that the best thing for Britain and the government would be for the anti-bailout Syriza party to triumph in the Greek elections on Sunday. Syriza, a party of the radical left, is hardly a natural bedfellow for the Tory right. But these ministers and MPs have come to the conclusion that the eurozone crisis must be brought to a head, and a Syriza victory would do exactly that. Indeed, the Chancellor

Friday

15 Jun 2012

James Forsyth

Osborne leans on King

What we saw at the Mansion House last night gave us some hints of where British economic policy will go if the Eurozone start to fragment. For the moment, Osborne is persisting in getting the Bank of England to do the heavy lifting using monetary policy rather than attempting a fiscal stimulus. The first line of defence is what one source described to me as ‘highly active monetary policy.’ The fact that the chancellor has persuaded the notoriously prickly Bank Governor to offer loans against weaker security is a definite success for him and a sign that he’s developed a far better relationship with King than either Brown or Darling.

Martin Bright

Have Israel and Britain given up on each other?

Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement to authorise more than 800 new housing units in West Bank settlements, and the condemnation which followed from British Foreign Secretary William Hague, has marked a new high-water mark in the mutual frustration felt by the two governments. The move, which followed close on the heels of the Israeli Prime Minister’s decision to block legislation to regularise unauthorised settlement building, was criticised in a strongly-worded statement from Mr Hague last Thursday: ‘While we appreciate the Israeli Government’s efforts to avoid damaging legislation in the Israeli Knesset by voting against a bill to legalise West Bank outposts, the decision to move settlers from an illegal outpost by creating

Fraser Nelson

Osborne’s debt spiral

‘If we lose sight of the central role of debt in this crisis, we will come to the wrong conclusions about how to respond,’ said George Osborne last night — before announcing another massive tranche of debt. The Mail and The Telegraph put it at £140 billion, the Times and the FT at £100 billion and Bloomberg at £5 billion a month. ‘The government, with the help of the Bank of England, will not stand on the sidelines and do nothing as the storm gathers.’ CoffeeHousers may hear an echo of Gordon Brown’s language here, contrasting advocates of a Keynesian spending plan with the ‘do nothing Conservatives.’ Now it’s Osborne,

Fraser Nelson

How close is too close?

David Cameron acquitted himself well at Leveson yesterday, as he does in all such events. But it was odd to hear him say that there should be ‘more distance’ between politicians and the press. The implication of his comment is that he has been sucked into the brutal realpolitik of the newspaper industry; that he had to spend weekends with Rebekah Brooks or face electoral oblivion; and that the only question for Lord Justice Leveson is why politicians are left in such a position. I look at this in my Telegraph column today. No one forced Cameron to get on LOL-terms with the editor of The Sun. Certainly, he

Thursday

14 Jun 2012

David Blackburn

Osborne, competitiveness and confidence

George Osborne will formally unveil the government’s banking reforms in a speech at Mansion House later this evening. The reforms are in line with the recommendations of Sir John Vickers’s Independent Banking Commission (ICB), as laid out by the Treasury, which published this White Paper earlier today. For those who’ve forgotten, Vickers suggested splitting retail and investment banking through a Glass-Steagall-type ‘ring-fence’ mechanism that would protect retail, SME deposits and overdrafts while commanding that the ring-fenced part of the bank is not dependent on other departments for liquidity. This, it is hoped, will ensure that the taxpayer is insulated from bailouts in the future, which is, obviously, a key political

David Blackburn

Cameron: SpAds answer to me

David Cameron was visibly rattled by Robert Jay QC, Counsel to the Leveson Inquiry, earlier today. Counsel was examining the relationship between the PM and Rebekah Brooks. Counsel concentrated on the text that Mrs Brooks sent Mr Cameron on the eve of his 2009 party conference speech. Mrs Brooks’s use of Cameron’s phrase ‘in this together’, which he used extensively in the subsequent speech, has led some to argue that their relationship was too close. In the morning session, Counsel asked Mr Cameron how often he met Mrs Brooks socially at the weekend. Mr Cameron was vague in response, only offering ‘well not every week’ in answer. (Mr Cameron returned from lunch with

Steerpike

Here come the Blairs and the Coe

While summer party season is warming up, is the work drying up for Cherie Blair? At last night’s Renaissance Photography Prize at the Mall Gallery, Mrs Blair took full advantage of being introduced as Cherie Booth QC. ‘As a barrister there are important people for me here – solicitors!’ She went on to name check the sponsors Freshfields in a brazen nudge for their work. The short-listed photographers and breast cancer charity of course played second fiddle. *** Crossing the road to the annual Beating the Retreat on Horse Guards Parade, crowds were anticipating a royal to receive the salute and oversee proceedings. Drum roll please, trumpets ready, here comes

David Blackburn

A great moment in the Commons

History was made in the House of Commons this afternoon when two MPs spoke openly of their mental health problems; the first time that MPs have done so in the House. I’m indebted to Andrew Sparrow’s invaluable politics live blog at the Guardian, which carries the statements. Labour’s Kevan Jones on his depression: ‘Like a lot of men, you try and deal with it yourself. You don’t talk to people. First of all it creeps up on you very slowly. I think in politics we are designed to think that somehow that if you admit fault or frailty you are going to be looked on in a disparaging way both